I appear to be adding traditions as I get older, but fortunately, the latest one is not going to stick. I vowed that this year I will finish working on the Friday before Christmas. Specifically that I will switch my Mac off at 16:00 and refuse, utterly refuse to switch it back on until at least 16:05.<\/p>\n
It won’t happen. I don’t know when I’ll finish because\u00a0I am forty times busier than this time last year though, consequently, also one hundred\u00a0percent happier.<\/p>\n
There is a point, usually around midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve, when I sink. Plummet, really. I don\u2019t know how long it lasts because I go to bed to hide from it, but it\u2019s frighteningly, disabling, paralysingly strong. It\u2019s a bald and unarguable feeling that I\u2019ve wasted the last year and a fear that I\u2019ll waste the next one too.<\/p>\n
I will get it again this New Year\u2019s Eve but just for once, maybe just for now, I think it\u2019ll be okay.<\/p>\n
For this week I found myself telling someone how I have never written better than I am writing now. You can question just how well that actually is, but the trend is upwards in my mind.<\/p>\n
And then recently I was in a conversation about how poor my secondary school was. It was suggested that I\u2019d have got further and done more if it hadn\u2019t been so bad. I\u2019m embarrassed to tell you this but without thinking, without pause, I found myself saying \u201cBetter than this?\u201d<\/p>\n
I can rationalise that as being less about my thinking I\u2019m doing great and instead knowing that the projects I get to work on are tremendous. I will not say that I\u2019m lucky to be doing what I do because it ain\u2019t luck, it\u2019s deliberate and ceaseless\u00a0effort, but I\u2019ll eat your ear off about how fortunate I am to work on these things with these people.<\/p>\n
Still, I sounded like I was boasting and I am cringing at you here because I also sounded high-pitched.<\/p>\n
Just between you and me, that was the only bit I really didn\u2019t like. I may practice saying it with more gravitas. Actually, I might: if I can, I\u2019d like to make that attitude be more of a habit.<\/p>\n
Whereas I haven’t been so intentionally\u00a0looking to make traditions yet\u00a0I\u2019ve now got two that I look forward to at this time of year.\u00a0Two that I crave each\u00a0Christmas.<\/p>\n
One is old, as old as traditions are supposed to be, and I can\u2019t even remember how many decades it\u2019s been now. Through coincidence, chance, habit and possibly a little bit of effort, I tend to get between ninety\u00a0minutes and two hours alone early on Christmas Eve. It\u2019s exactly the point where it no longer matters whether you\u2019ve finished all your work because there is nobody to deliver it to, nobody who\u2019s waiting for it. Not right now, not right then.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve called this a Lagrange Point before<\/a>. That\u2019s an astronomy term and in my slightly buckled metaphorical version, it\u2019s a moment of stillness caused by all the forces around you equalling each other out. They\u2019re still there, they are still\u00a0as powerful and demanding, but they equal each other out and I float.<\/p>\n Previously I\u2019ve chosen to spend this time catching up on a film I\u2019ve wanted to see but that\u2019s probably over now. I\u2019m probably going to read, perhaps listen to something. Just not watch a film or at least I don’t think so. Because that\u2019s now the newer of my two Christmas Eve traditions.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll wait to midnight. I\u2019ll be with family for most of the evening, I\u2019ll do Christmas Eve-y things and then as close to midnight as I can make it, I will be in our living room and I\u2019ll re-watch the film Arrival<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are people who say you should go to midnight mass, that you should experience some religion at this time and to them I say yep, that\u2019s exactly what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n The film is about many things but most specifically language and time, subjects that obsess me beyond reasonable measure. I have a collection of time short stories that is currently due to come out next year (it may slip to 2020) and I was writing them when I first saw the film. I\u2019m not going to say that Arrival made me want to rip them all up, but only because that would look quite\u00a0bad as the quote on the back of my book.<\/p>\n This Arrival Lagrange Point started because the film got a limited re-release at Christmas in 2016 and the only screening I could get to was a late night Christmas Eve one. That was the fourth time I\u2019d seen the film that year. It was the third time in the cinema and of course I bought it on iTunes, of course I watched it on our TV set.<\/p>\n Then last Christmas, I watched it again at home at midnight on Christmas Eve 2017. Since then and throughout this\u00a0year I have avoided it, I have resisted it and I have waited for it.<\/p>\n Midnight, Christmas Eve, 2018. Arrival. Damn right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I appear to be adding traditions as I get older, but fortunately, the latest one is not going to stick. … Continue reading